Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
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The effort by advocates of the medical use of marijuana to link their cause to the Supreme Court's federalism revolution appeared headed for failure at the court on Monday...
(I)llegal drugs are fungible and exist within a national market, Paul D. Clement, the acting solicitor general, told the Supreme Court in arguing the administration's appeal, Ashcroft v. Raich, No. 03-1454. "What we're talking about here is the possession, manufacture and distribution of a valuable commodity for which there is, unfortunately, a ready market," he said.
Mr. Clement asserted that Supreme Court precedents dating to the New Deal made it clear that "the relevant focal point is not the individual plaintiff's activities" but rather the impact on the economy of an entire category of activity, taken as a whole, that Congress has chosen to regulate.
In fact, much of the debate in the courtroom on Monday centered on one particular precedent, Wickard v. Filburn, a decision from 1942 that upheld Congress's effort to support wheat prices by controlling wheat production. The court held that even the wheat that a farmer cultivated for home consumption could be regulated under the Agricultural Adjustment Act's quota system on the theory that all wheat production took place within a national market. That decision is regarded as one of the most far-reaching extensions of Congressional power that the Supreme Court has ever upheld.
Randy E. Barnett, a Boston University Law School professor arguing on behalf of the two women, told the justices on Monday that if they accepted the administration's argument in this case, "then Ashcroft v. Raich will replace Wickard v. Filburn as the most far-reaching example" of Congress's power over interstate commerce. Prohibition of "a class of activity that is noneconomic and wholly intrastate" was not essential to the government's "regulatory regime," he said, adding: "There is no interstate connection whatsoever."
But the justices whom Mr. Barnett needed to persuade, those who have questioned federal authority in recent cases, were skeptical. "It looks like Wickard to me," Justice Antonin Scalia told him, adding: "I always used to laugh at Wickard, but that's what Wickard says." He continued: "Why is this not economic activity? This marijuana that's grown is like wheat. Since it's grown, it doesn't have to be bought elsewhere."
Somebody wake me from this nightmare.
Hello, Provo.
Provo residents who have both dogs and cats as pets are breaking the law - but one Provo family is working to change that. On Dec. 7, Provo City Council members are expected to vote on adding one word to existing city code which allows residents to own up to two dogs or two cats at the same time -- but not a dog and a cat together...
The problem came to Knecht's attention after Susan Sewell, her husband David and their six children, ages 4-19, went to the Utah County Animal Shelter in Spanish Fork to adopt a kitten in August. The family already has a cat and a dog.
They chose a kitten and began filling out the adoption paperwork. But when shelter staff learned of their existing pets, the family was told they could not have the animal because Provo only allowed residents to have cats or dogs, not cats and dogs.
Write your council member today. If we lose this struggle here, we'll take it to the Supreme Court!
Well now, here's one I hadn't thought of before.
A biodegradable mobile phone has been developed by researchers hoping to encourage consumers to recycle. The phone casing contains a sunflower seed which germinates when the handset is buried in compost.
I bet the reception is lousy after it blooms, though.
You get my back, I'll get yours.
With marine mammal rescues you always have to wait a few days at least to see if it was succesful; the disoriented creatures have a puzzling tendency to re-beach themselves. Keep your flippers crossed.
Is this thing on?
Update (11/30, 9:45 am): Well, that was difficult. Long story short, people who unleash comment spam bots ought to have their fingernails ripped out and genitalia electrocuted before they get sent to the Uzbeki prison. At the very least, we should be making liberal use of the piñata method. Anyhow, I'm now running a shiny new MovableType 3.121 installation with MT-Blacklist 2.0, and nothing appears to have vanished into the ether. Whew. Please let me know if you get blocked from commenting when you shouldn't be. I'm still fiddling with the dials over here.
NASA has great images from the Cassini probe of Saturn's moons Titan, Tethys, and Rhea.
I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready...
On Nov. 18 the Little Falls Police Department responded to a call that a large SpongeBob was missing from the top of the Burger King Restaurant. In place of SpongeBob was a ransom note stating in part, "We have SpongeBob. Give us 10 crabby patties, fries and milk shakes," signed Plankton. The note also warned "Patrick is next."
According to members of the Little Falls Police Department, "Plankton always wants the recipe for crabby patties and he is unable to attain it. Patrick is SpongeBob’s sidekick." The investigation continues. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Burger King’s SpongeBob is asked to contact the Little Falls Police Department at 616-5570.
(via Obscure Store)
Last year I got all heavy with my hopefully-to-be-annual Thanksgiving greeting.
But this year, partly because I have so much for which to be thankful and partly because being thankful this year has proven to be a special challenge at times, I figure I'll be a little lighter. Y'know what I'm thankful for? Turkeys.
Did you know Ben Franklin, my favorite founding father, wanted the eastern wild turkey to be our national symbol? But by the late 19th century the species, Meleagris gallopavo, was hunted so thoroughly and had its habitat destroyed so completely that it almost went extinct. After four failed attempts, largely due to the efforts of early hunting organizations - long the only conservation organizations in the country - by 1970, the species began seriously rebounding and today is one of the best success stories of reintroducing native species to wide swaths of eastern habitat.
The wild turkey is slightly different from the domesticated one (a subspecies), which is descended from smaller stock raised for centuries by Aztec and Maya farmers (and Olmec before them) and then spread across North America via adoption by European settlers. They are gallinaceous (chicken-like) and related to pheasants, grouse, and peacocks.
Turkeys are generalists, and their success and reintroduction has much to do with that flexibility in diet. They eat insects, leaves, grasses, and seeds out of the most marginal habitats. They are big birds, averaging 17 pounds, but can fly up to 55 mph in short bursts and escape predators that way more often than not, although they spend most of the day walking.
A group of turkeys is known as a rafter and the young are called poults. Mating rituals are elaborate and musical. Prancing and fluffing feathers enhance the peculiar calls of both the Toms and Hens.
Snoods, wattles, dewlaps, and caruncles are the folds of blood-engorged skin that hang from the head or neck of the gobbler (another name for tom) in some red, blue, or purple hue and they're adapted to catch the eye of a hormonally heightened hen at breeding time in the Spring. The toms don't take part in childrearing. Hens lay an egg a day for up to 2 weeks then incubate the clutch for about a month. The poults can fly within 3 weeks after hatching.
They are a favorite of hunters, with a bit of a cult following, so-to-speak. Turkey season is generally in October and November (surprise!) but varies by region.
So there's something for which ol' Froz is thankful: a native species that went into decline and has now rebounded because of the actions of those who like to hunt and eat them. I'm thankful for a wild species that had one particularly extinction-avoiding trait: they go well with Zin blends. Yum.
Happy Thanksgiving!
In this correspondence may contain privileged and confidential information...
Alternatively, it may detail our scam to interfere in tribal elections in order to empower individuals who are more likely to contract with our lobbying firm to gain access to Tom DeLay's "network" in Washington, a scam contrived to extract big campaign contributions from casino revenue in exchange for friendly votes on casino-related legislation, allthewhile said tribes being unaware of our duplicitous work on behalf of competing tribal casino operators and, ironically, Ralph Reed to shut them down. Pay no attention to the $66 million.
Reminder to self: emails live forever.
Bill Moyers has more, including a link to the emails as presented as evidence to the Senate Indian Affairs committee. Look 8 paragraphs down; warning: 22MB pdf. But very damning. No wonder Abramoff and Scanlon pleaded the fifth.
The top left one is real. The other five are not, but they aren't any more far-fetched. See the rest of the collection here.
"When Chairman Mao said ...'The revolution is not a tea party', what he meant was that the revolution was in fact a big dance party. And to commemorate the event and encourage smoking among the masses, he commissioned a special musical cigarette lighter. This sturdy 7.5cmx3.5cm cast iron gas refillable lighter plays a sweet rendition of the Chinese national anthem, that you can tap your feet to while enjoying the last puffs of the revolution."
The longest geographical place name in the United States is Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg in Webster, Massachusetts. 15 Gs! Yes, it's real and Ethel Merman even sang a song about it.
There is even talk here of trying to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, but there is no category yet for longest lake name, said Sam Knights, a spokesman for Guinness World Records. There is a longest place name and, alas, it is someplace else. The honor goes to what the Guinness people call the "most scholarly transliteration" of the official name for Bangkok: krungthephphramahanakhon bowonratanakosin mahintharayuthaya mahadilokphiphobnovpharad radchataniburirom udomsantisug.
Say that ten times fast.
Always good to see us mammals sticking together.
A pod of dolphins circled protectively round a group of New Zealand swimmers to fend off an attack by a great white shark, media reported on Tuesday. Lifesavers Rob Howes, his 15-year-old daughter Niccy, Karina Cooper and Helen Slade were swimming 300 feet off Ocean Beach near Whangarei on New Zealand's North Island when the dolphins herded them -- apparently to protect them from a shark.
"They started to herd us up, they pushed all four of us together by doing tight circles around us," Howes told the New Zealand Press Association (NZPA). Howes tried to drift away from the group, but two of the bigger dolphins herded him back just as he spotted a nine-foot great white shark swimming toward the group.
"I just recoiled. It was only about 2 meters away from me, the water was crystal clear and it was as clear as the nose on my face," Howes said, referring to a distance of six feet. "They had corralled us up to protect us," he said.
The lifesavers spent the next 40 minutes surrounded by the dolphins before they could safely swim back to shore.
Way back in 1992, I was at Hilton Head Island, SC and got to go out on a raft among wild dolphins (the program was discontinued shortly afterwards for fear of altering their natural behavior). They would swim right up to the side of the raft, having come to associate it with being fed little fish, and allow you to pet them. In this case, it was a mother and a calf. The first impression I had was, "Holy crap, those things are enormous." The second was that their intelligence was apparent just from looking into their (very human-like) eyes. The experience was powerful and while discontinuing the interactions was obviously the proper course of action, I was still glad to have slid in before the window closed. When I was down there this spring, I had a couple surface and swim by no further than 15 feet from where my brother-in-law and I were standing in neck-deep water. They are magnificent creatures.
In some alternative medicine circles, dolphins are believed to have healing abilities, usually attributed to their ultrasound abilities.
Their powerful sonar can penetrate up to three feet through sand and mud with resolution significant enough to distinguish between a dime and a penny. Due to this power, scientists believe that dolphins can view the inside of our bodies similar to a sonogram performed on pregnant women. Indeed, dolphins are fascinated with pregnant women, honing in on the unborn fetus. Furthermore, they often focus on individuals’ specific areas of impairment, as well as places containing tumors. Many times people who swim with the dolphins can feel himself being scanned. As if bypassing the ears, the sound resonates in the bones, traveling up the spine. [...] Furthermore, the dolphin’s sonar echolocation apparently reduced various tissue restrictions, including adhesions resulting from past surgeries, scarring, or trauma.
International Dolphin Watch has a brief overview of some of the dolphin-assisted therapy currently being explored. However, such therapies with captive dolphins is ethically questionable since, as the late marine biologist Jacques Cousteau noted:
To really understand dolphins, one must study them on their own terms. For them, the sea is a realm whose vast spaces are defined acoustically. Cetaceans communicate over hundreds of miles, making theirs a truly global society. Surrounded by this universal conductor of communication, marine mammals develop unusually strong bonds to one another. Individuals depend heavily on their position within the group, or "pod," for their identity.
Dolphins in tanks are bombarded by a garble of their own vocalizations, which may in fact be acutely painful. Because these are sounds of communication as well as navigation, their world becomes a maze of meaningless reverberations. Their entire societal structure, so crucial for their well-being, is shattered.
Some organizations researching such therapies only use wild dolphins that willingly swim up to take part and, amazingly enough, some dolphins do just that, then swim back out to the ocean. Fascinating...
Because everybody likes to dress up fancy sometimes.
A Serbian tie maker is planning to launch a new range of penis cravats for the man who has everything. Designer Neven Vrgoc said: "The ties are of a special shape and do not go around the neck of the man, but around his member. I hope male customers will buy them to create a good impression on a first date, or women might present them to men when they have been totally satisfied."
Hmm. It's been a while since I've dated, but as I recall, whipping out ones johnson on a first date - even when it's in formal attire - seldom leads to a good impression.
I meant to link to this several days ago, but haven't had much time to do any blogging recently. Anyhow, Mitch Mills mentioned it in the comments to this Unfogged post and I found it one of the most entertaining and eye-opening things I'd read in some time. One man's comparison of living in Piscataway (NJ), Kochi (Japan), and Zhuzhou (China). Enjoy.
The most puzzling difference listed to me was the currency denominations, which I'm sure are indicative of something profound, but I can't begin to guess exactly what that would be.
U.S.
coins: 0.01 0.05 0.10 0.25
bills: 1 5 10 20 100
Japan
coins: 0.01 0.04 0.09 0.45 0.90 4.50
bills 9, 45, 90
China
coins: 0.01 0.06 0.12
bills: 0.01 0.06 0.12 0.24 0.60 1.20 2.40, 6, 12
Update (8:00 pm): Absentmindedness über alles. Ben Wolfson, not Mitch Mills, provided the link and there's nothing weird about the currency, it's just converted to dollar equivalents. I can't tell you how disappointing that is. Where'd I put my teeth?
Via Political Wire, here's some mighty disheartening news about the state of modern America. A just-released Gallup poll found:
Only about a third of Americans believe that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific theory that has been well supported by the evidence, while just as many say that it is just one of many theories and has not been supported by the evidence. The rest say they don't know enough to say. Forty-five percent of Americans also believe that God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago. A third of Americans are biblical literalists who believe that the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.
What can you even say about this? I know we are supposed to be reaching out and trying to find common ground with our conservative countrymen, but those three statements above... I give up. Anybody over the age of 12 who still believes that stuff in 2004 is simply too divorced from reality to be reached. Just not worth the effort. I wish I could be delicate and polite about this, but you know, I just can't. If you believe Darwin is unsupported by the facts, then you haven't bothered to look at the facts. Ever. Your silverware options should be restricted to plastic sporks so you don't injure yourself.
I return to my original thesis of a couple weeks ago. We should be striving to make such beliefs the hallmark of the Republican Party. Just like Elizabeth Bumiller pestering Kerry with the meaningless "Are you a liberal?" question during the primary debate, GOP officeholders should be forced to publicly defend or deny those positions every time a Q&A session gets underway.
"Senator McCain, do you believe that Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection is unsupported by the facts?"
"Vice President Cheney, do you believe that the entire fossil record is a hoax and that humans were created 10,000 years ago?"
"President Bush, do you believe that sex in a 2nd marriage is, in all cases, adultery?" (Mark 10:9)
How a country with this much wealth, media access, and free public education ends up with huge swaths of the population holding beliefs that were ripped straight from the Dark Ages is a mystery I may never resolve. Here's the framing, folks: Democrats are the party of science and education; Republicans are the party of religious extremism. Most Christians I know are completely rational, intelligent, and aghast at the anti-intellectualism of their fundamentalist brethren. They may share some iconography but they ascribe to two totally dissimilar religions. The GOP should have a price to pay for feeding this constituency.
And if you work in any area of scientific research (except, I guess, in the fields of weapons development or fossil fuel extraction) and still voted for this ticket despite their stunning record of hostility toward science, you should be ashamed. You knew better.
To the "let's destroy the heathenistic, communististic public schools conference" this weekend in Washington?
Take a brief (trust me, keep it brief) tour around the website of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State. Feel your skin crawl, shudder at their recent empowerment, and leave quickly, I advise.
My favorite bit, mindful of the educational value of constructive engagement with people holding differing opinions from your own, from their FAQ, is here.
I weep.
The human and the hare. Fascinating stuff.
"We think running is one of the most transforming events in human history," Bramble added. "We are arguing the emergence of humans is tied to the evolution of running." The conventional theory is that our distinctive body form derives from an improved walking ability in early hominids, and that running was simply a byproduct of this earlier adaptation. Also, humans are considered unaccomplished runners when compared to mammals such as pronghorn antelopes, which can sprint at 40 miles an hour (60 kilometers an hour) for several minutes.
But Bramble says human running ability is often underestimated. "What's important is combining reasonable speed with exceptional endurance," he said. The study notes that athletic humans can outrun horses and antelopes over extremely long distances. In parts of Africa this technique is still used today by hunters to exhaust their prey. Bramble adds that walking cannot explain the changes in body form that distinguish humans from Australopithecus.
Interesting hypothesis that has been widely circulated in the news the last couple of days. It's well worth the read. I can only chuckle at the irony that our species may have obtained our dominance on the planet in part because of our endurance, or ability to be patient and persistent and think long-term, yet now our civilization seems perilously obsessed with immediate self-gratification.
Swiss teenagers smoke more cannabis than their peers in every other European country, a survey said Thursday, casting a pall over the country's prim and wholesome image. One in three Swiss 15-year-olds has lit up a joint within the past year, while the number of teenagers regularly smoking or getting drunk rose 10 percent between 1998 and 2002, the Swiss Institute for the Prevention of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse said in their survey. [...]
Britain and Spain trailed Switzerland as the top cannabis consumers, while British and Scandinavian teenagers stood out for "drinking in order to get drunk," the survey of children aged 11-15 in more than 30 European countries showed. Dispelling the image of the Netherlands as a haven of hash-lovers, young people in this country showed only an average level of cannabis use.
I wondered why my Swiss Army Knife included a hemostat.
Dreamworks' film Shark Tale is trying to turn your kids queer. But don't you worry, cruel.com assures us that the American Family Association is on the case.
It is when Shark Tale turns its attention to Lenny that it veers toward an undercurrent of approval for homosexuality. While it is difficult to prove intent when a film does not explicitly make a character "gay," the story and dialogue demonstrate an implicit approval of homosexuality. The movie is, as Peter Debruge of Premiere magazine said in a review, "a weak allegory about a macho dad learning to accept his gay son."
In developing this allegory, Shark Tale uses all of the familiar Hollywood plot devices, beginning with the son who is "different," and who fails to measure up to the cultural standards of manhood. Lenny's mannerisms and voice tend toward the effeminate, notes a review by Scott Tobias in The Onion A.V. Club, but that's not the worst of it. For in sharkdom, masculinity is measured by one's proficiency as a meat-eater.
The kid is a vegetarian who likes to dress up as a dolphin. Uh oh. Priscilla, Queen of the Deep. Leather pants are one thing, but no son of mine is going to be sporting a blowhole, I'll tell you that right now. Note the irony that "eating meat" is the sign of good healthy heterosexuality.
A Bulgarian farmer has gone to court to demand substantial damages after claiming the prize-winning pedigree pig he bought from a breeder was a homosexual. Farmer Galen Dobrev, 43, from Shumen in Bulgaria told the court: "It's a disgrace, all he was interested in was other male pigs." The farmer took pictures of the gay pig to prove the 220-pound boar was homosexual and had fellow farmers testify on his behalf as to the pig's sexual preferences.
He told the court that when his fellow farmers heard about the gay pig it had also been impossible to sell him - and in the end he had turned the animal into sausages. But the breeder who sold the pig claimed that the farmer had acted too soon by making pork sausages, and said that if he had waited until the pig was sexually mature he would have found it performed perfectly normally.
Mabel, these sausages have a queer taste to them. Best sentence to take out of context: "The farmer [...] had fellow farmers testify on his behalf as to the pig's sexual preferences."
Hundreds of people have been injured in an annual stone throwing festival at a remote mountain village in northern India. Residents of Dhami near Shimla divided themselves into two groups and pelted stones at each other. The group having the least number of wounded were declared winners reports Asian News International.
It is reported participants were extremely enthusiastic about the stone throwing ritual, which continued for more than an hour in spite of injuries sustained. Local administrators and police set up several makeshift medical camps to treat the bleeding victims. Those severely wounded were taken to hospitals at Shimla for treatment.
The Stranger has an interesting (and a bit pissed off) editorial recommending the strategy for the Democratic Party: become the urbanist party. Lay out some solid strategies for urban renewal and livability, like affordable housing and transit, focus on municipal government, and grow the cities. The 2004 results are clear: it's Metropolis against Ruralia, and it's very nearly tied.
If Democrats and urban residents want to combat the rising tide of red that threatens to swamp and ruin this country, we need a new identity politics, an urban identity politics, one that argues for the cities, uses a rhetoric of urban values, and creates a tribal identity for liberals that's as powerful and attractive as the tribal identity Republicans have created for their constituents. John Kerry won among the highly educated, Jews, young people, gays and lesbians, and non-whites. What do all these groups have in common? They choose to live in cities. An overwhelming majority of the American popuation chooses to live in cities. And John Kerry won every city with a population above 500,000. He took half the cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000. The future success of liberalism is tied to winning the cities. An urbanist agenda may not be a recipe for winning the next presidential election--but it may win the Democrats the presidential election in 2012 and create a new Democratic majority.
[...]
We won't concern ourselves if red states restrict choice. We'll just make sure that abortion remains safe and legal in the cities where we live, and the states we control, and when your daughter or sister or mother dies in a botched abortion, we'll try not to feel too awful about it.
In short, we're through with you people. We're going to demand that the Democrats focus on building their party in the cities while at the same time advancing a smart urban-growth agenda that builds the cities themselves. The more attractive we make the cities--politically, aesthetically, socially--the more residents and voters cities will attract, gradually increasing the electoral clout of liberals and progressives. For Democrats, party building and city building is the same thing. We will strive to turn red states blue one city at a time.
The piece is long and I had trouble not quoting huge passages of it, so it's very much worth your time to read the whole thing.
Technological achievements come in many sizes. They also come at different velocities: some really fast, but for some you have to wait a while.
Makes me want to spend some time thinking about time.
"We like to say that the big bang is nothing special in the history of our universe," said Sean Carroll, an Assistant Professor in Physics at the University of Chicago.
Yeah, I like to say that, too. But what do I know?
This is gonna hurt me worse than it hurts you.
Matanuska [Alaska] Christian School's principal has been fired and a teacher has quit over a disciplinary incident in which the principal had himself whipped in front of two students. Principal Steve Unfreid, who said he was inspired in his choice of disciplinary tactics by the actions of Jesus, asked teacher Joe Brost to whip him in front of two male students in the school's basement last month after the boys were caught kissing girls in the locker room for the second time in a week.
[...]
When the two seniors, 17 and 18, got caught kissing girls in front of younger students in late October, Unfreid said that while contemplating what discipline to hand out, he woke at 3 a.m. and prayed how to avoid expelling them. He said that was when he remembered years ago he had cured his son of chronic lying by telling his son to hit him with a wooden ladle instead of spanking the youngster.
Later at school, Unfreid walked the boys down to a basement room with Brost. He told them, " 'Guys, this has gotta stop,' " he said. " 'I've let the atmosphere get too lax. I share in this discipline. This is a one-time deal.' " Then the principal took off his belt, gave it to Brost, and instructed the teacher to "discipline me like you would discipline your own son," he recalled. He told the teacher to stop only when the students acknowledged their mistake. The whole thing, starting with the trip downstairs, lasted 5 to 10 minutes, he said.
Wow.
It has finally happened. Chemical weapons in the hands of a religious fundamentalist are being used in Iraq. Unfortunately, he's one of ours.
Providing a fuller, more revealing quote from Lt. Col. Brandl, the Sunday Times of London included a lead-in sentence: "The Marines that I have had wounded over the past five months have been attacked by a faceless enemy. But the enemy has got a face. He's called Satan... In other words, Satan started this conflict. And we -- the anti-Satan forces -- fully intend to finish it by destroying him."
[...]
During a real holy war, of course, the fire and brimstone is not just figurative. Dominating the top half of the New York Times front page on Nov. 10 was a full-color picture with stunning hues and brilliant composition, over this caption: "Marines tried to take cover after a phosphorous round, set off to help provide cover for tanks, rained down on the unit. No one was seriously hurt." An article inside mentioned that the phosphorous broke "into a hundred flaming pieces ... burning backpacks and gear but seriously hurting no one." Reassuring.
Meanwhile, a Washington Post article provided more graphic -- though sketchy -- information about phosphorous. "Some artillery guns fired white phosphorous rounds that create a screen of fire that cannot be extinguished with water," the Post explained more than 20 paragraphs into the story. "Insurgents reported being attacked with a substance that melted their skin, a reaction consistent with white phosphorous burns." The Post quoted hospital physician Kamal Hadeethi: "The corpses of the mujaheddin which we received were burned, and some corpses were melted."
But such melting of human flesh is an abstraction in U.S. media, as it is apt to be for holy warriors. On NBC’s "Today" show Nov. 9, a network correspondent in Baghdad mentioned phosphorous shells just long enough to say that they are "meant to burn through metal bunkers." Presumably a description of effects on human beings would not have gone well with viewers breakfasts.
A live report from a CNN correspondent in Fallujah, on Nov. 8, was similarly circumspect: "Tanks have been blasting away inside the city, and shells filled with phosphorous -- shells to hide the movement of the Marines inside the city -- have been exploding overhead."
Via Lenin's Tomb, who notes that the use of white phosphorus "violates the Geneva Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare, for those who think it matters." I await the principled denunciations from the hawks who endlessly flogged the fifteen-year-old chemical attacks on Halabja.
Whaddayknow? The Poor Man and I share the very same FAVORITE THING EVER: "getting pious lectures from devout Christians who haven't even bothered to read the Cliff Notes to the Bible. And it happens constantly."
Oh god, does it ever. And if you ever needed an excuse to read the Bible, this is it: eventually, you will make a hollering thumper's head explode when you drive the lane and throw down thundering scriptural dunk after thundering scriptural dunk. Spectators will actually applaud. You'll feel like Ali taunting Ernie Terrell. "What's my name?" Okay, before you read any further, go read the post and the comments too, because taken together, they are the funniest thing you'll read for weeks - especially when the Lord sayeth "it's your chance to do the dance they call the Hump." All the prophets in the top ten, please allow me to bump thee.
Speaking as a long-backslid Baptist who spent many childhood Sundays doing Bible drills, let me make this perfectly clear: if you can't even get the scriptural references right when you're lecturing me about my need to live more biblically, I will follow you all the way home mocking you at the top of my lungs.
Jack Louis, Froz's second buck private in the little liberal army we're breeding, is rumbling along toward two months old (ahem... pictures, yo). Noah Joseph, my second, has two months to go. That's me and my two boys in North Carolina, Froz and his two boys in California.
Surrender, Middle America. We've got you surrounded.
Ananova: "German customs officers have seized Saddam Hussein's left leg."
Ananova: "The Duchess of Northumberland has won permission to grow cannabis, opium, magic mushrooms and cocaine."
I guess it's still a net gain, though not by much.
President Bush has chosen White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, a Texas confidant and one of the most prominent Hispanics in the administration, to succeed Attorney General John Ashcroft, sources close to the White House said today. [...] Gonzales has been at the center of developing Bush's positions on balancing civil liberties with waging the war on terrorism -- opening the White House counsel to the same line of criticism that has dogged Ashcroft. For instance, Gonzales publicly defended the administration's policy -- essentially repudiated by the Supreme Court and now being fought out in the lower courts -- of detaining certain terrorism suspects for extended periods without access to lawyers or courts. He also wrote a controversial February 2002 memo in which Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture law and international treaties providing protections to prisoners of war. That position drew fire from human rights groups, which said it helped led to the type of abuses uncovered in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Human women are less promiscuous than chimps but more promiscuous than gorillas. How do we know? By the size of our testicles.
Update (12:11 pm): In a loosely related story...
Yes, I'm going to flog this horse 'til you're sick to death of reading about it. For another example of the reaching-across-the-aisle tolerance of conservatives, go watch this video: I Am a Liberal (found via Matt Welch). Hey, if that's the game you want to play, then let's get to it.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
I am a conservative.
By the way, this guy, this guy, and this guy were all liberals.
See what a stupid game this is? Here's the truth of the matter: the fight in this country isn't between left and right, two labels that couldn't fit more poorly to 21st century American politics. The division is between normalcy and extremism. The Republican Party, once a proud redoubt of free thinking and principled stands, now teeters on the edge of being dominated by its extremist elements.
Despite how that sounds, it isn't a masturbation euphemism. Ergo, the entirely work-safe video can be viewed here.
To be the pinnacle of American newspaper journalism, the New York Times has undergone a decline in quality so steep as to take ones breath away. But for all the snowballing awfulness of the reporting, it simply can't compete with the 9.8 meters per second per second decline in the quality of the editorial pages. Truly breathtaking vapidity, and more of it with each day's drying ink. The sole remaining beacon of reason in the Old Grey Lady's pages? Bob Herbert, baby.
A recent survey by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland found that nearly 70 percent of President Bush's supporters believe the U.S. has come up with "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with Al Qaeda. A third of the president's supporters believe weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. And more than a third believe that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion.
This is scary. How do you make a rational political pitch to people who have put that part of their brain on hold? No wonder Bush won.
[...]
You have to be careful when you toss the word values around. All values are not created equal. Some Democrats are casting covetous eyes on voters whose values, in many cases, are frankly repellent.
Nailhead. Hammer. Pow.
Update (2:57 pm): As Mitch points out in the comments, they also have Paul Krugman, so, y'know, two ponies.
I have been living in Provo for about four years and I was just barely introduced to one of Provo's finest characters. A friend of mine told me about this man and where he could be found. I call him "Middle Finger Man" (MFM) because no one knows his real name. These man sits on his porch all day every day and flips off everyone that drives by and has been doing this for years. He is so reliable to be there that you can actually give directions according to this man as a landmark. "Yeah, head up Geneva and then when you see middle finger man, then I am the second turn after him....etc."
When I heard about this guy, I just couldn't believe it. I thought that would have to be the funniest thing that I have seen for a while. So I hopped on my motorcycle and headed over to Geneva Road. I drove over the bridge that spans the Provo River and counted the houses, "One House, two houses, three houses." I didn't see him at first and thought that I would go home without seeing him then BAM! There he was on his porch and AS SOON as I caught eyes with him, both fingers went flying up and stayed there til I was out of sight. I couldn't believe it. I quickly turned around to try it again. Same thing happened. So I tried it six more times (8 total) and just chuckled each time. [...]
The next day my buddy Dave and I headed over to MFM's house again with my video camera. What I decided to do was just to pull off in front of his house and challenge him to a battle. I would hold the camera on him and he would hold his fingers toward me. I'm not sure what would happen, but I knew it would be fun.
The video is priceless.
(via Zudfunck)
Y'know, these guys are starting to convince me that perhaps evolution is all bunk, because I'm having trouble believing that these folks have evolved at all.
A suburban American school board found itself in court yesterday after it tried to placate Christian fundamentalist parents by placing a sticker on its science textbooks saying evolution was "a theory, not a fact". Atlanta's Cobb County school board, the second largest board in Georgia, added the sticker two years ago after a 2,300 strong petition attacked the presentation of "Darwinism unchallenged". Some parents wanted creationism - the theory that God created humans according to the Bible version - to be taught alongside evolution. [...]
Marjorie Rogers, a parent who does not believe in evolution, protested and petitioned the board to add a sticker and an insert setting out other explanations for the origins of life. "It is unconstitutional to teach only evolution," she said. "The school board must allow the teaching of both theories of origin." Her efforts galvanised the fundamentalist community.
"God created earth and man in his image," another parent, Patricia Fuller, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Leave this garbage out of the textbooks. I don't want anybody taking care of me in a nursing home some day to think I came from a monkey."
This year Georgia's schools superintendent, Kathy Cox, removed the word "evolution" from the state's science teaching standards, but she quickly backtracked after receiving nearly 1,000 complaints. In 1987, the supreme court ruled that creationism was a religious belief that could not be taught in public schools along with evolution.
By the way, that superintendent ought to be driven out of public education - teaching "intelligent" design is one thing, removing the word evolution altogether is lawsuit-worthy professional malpractice. Here's what the stickers said: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered." Can we also stipulate that gravity is only a theory, not a fact, and it's possible that we don't fly off into space due to the Earth's Property of Universal Stickiness? This is just completely nuts.
I'll be willing to compromise on this one: the public schools will teach your Flat Earth nonsense, but you are required to teach evolution in your Sunday schools and affix a sticker to your Bibles declaring that the creation story is just an allegory, not a fact, and that the Bible should be approached with an open mind. What? That's unacceptable, you say? Then go back to burning your heretics and leave alone those of us who believe the Enlightenment actually happened. 300 years ago. Note: this story isn't taking place in East Ruralia, Oklahoma, but in a fricking Atlanta suburb. Atlanta!
I think if we would all just follow four basic principles, we will muddle through as a nation okay, no matter what happens. The Apostrophic Principles of Societal Survival are: don't give matches to pyromaniacs, don't give your car keys to drunks, don't give hand grenades to retards, and don't let religious fundamentalists anywhere near the levers of government. Best I can tell, Tuesday's election violated all four principles simultaneously.
Update (11:08 am): Via Miniver Cheevy, the best way to handle to handle these folks when they start preaching to you on the subway. Heh heh.
After Jones Soda Company's smashing success with the Turkey and Gravy Soda last year (oh, you'd like to think I'm just making that up, but I am so not making that up), you knew it was a lock that it would roll back into stores this fall. But in case you aren't restricted to the Atkins-friendly meat-only sodas, they now have your entire Thanksgiving meal in carbonated form.
I know the picture is too small to read the labels, but you can click it for a larger version to confirm that Jones Soda's Holiday Pack includes the following flavors: Turkey & Gravy Soda, Cranberry Soda, Mashed Potato & Butter, Green Bean Casserole, and Fruitcake Soda. I shit you not. I think I just threw up in my mouth.
Well, I'm just having me a grand old time reading all the tut-tutting from the right about how liberals look down on their fellow Americans and how our enduring nastiness and intolerance of conservatives is what keeps us from winning elections and so on and so forth. I supposed they might have a point, so I went back to check the right wing's record of bipartisan we're-all-in-this-togetherness, as reflected by some of their better selling books that were published during the long, polite campaign:
Ann Coulter
Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism
How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)
Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right
Sean Hannity
Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism
Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism
David Horowitz
Hating Whitey: and Other Progressive Causes
The Politics of Bad Faith: The Radical Assault on America's Future
David Limbaugh
Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity
Absolute Power: The Legacy of Corruption in the Clinton-Reno Justice Department
Mona Charen
Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First
Do-gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim To Help And The Rest Of Us
Michael Savage
The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military
John O'Neill
Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry
Dick Morris
Off with Their Heads : Traitors, Crooks & Obstructionists in American Politics, Media & Business
Neal Boortz
The Terrible Truth about Liberals
Carl Limbacher
Hillary's Scheme: Inside the Next Clinton's Ruthless Agenda to Take the White House
Robert Patterson
Reckless Disregard: How Liberal Democrats Undercut Our Military, Endanger Our Soldiers, and Jeopardize Our Security
Laura Ingraham
Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America
Ben Shapiro
Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth
Bernard Goldberg
Arrogance: Rescuing America From the Media Elite
Dan Flynn
Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness
Barbara Olsen
The Final Days: A Behind the Scenes Look at the Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House
Al Snow
Liberal-itis: A Thinking Disorder Destroying America
Tammy Bruce
The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values
Hugh Hewitt
If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It
Hmm. Well, in that spirit of bonhomie and civic highmindedness, I'd like to invite any of my conservative friends delivering lectures about the lack of liberal civility to kiss my hairy red ass. And I mean that in the very nicest, nonpartisan way.
Go to google, type in "Bush mandate" and hit the "I'm feeling lucky" button. (via Atrios)
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday that large numbers of Iraqi civilians would not be killed, ''certainly not by U.S. forces,'' during the siege to retake Fallujah, even as the top U.S. commander there predicted a ''major confrontation'' between insurgents and up to 15,000 troops in the Sunni Muslim city.
US forces began intense shelling across the city of Fallujah on Monday after Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi gave the go-ahead for an all-out assault on the rebel enclave. The skies above Fallujah burned red as artillery, warplanes and tanks pounded the city, said an AFP journalist embedded with the military.
There is nothing precise about artillery. The size of the bombs coming out of warplanes guarantees that no matter how precise they are (generally speaking, not much), they are going to blow up far more than the desired target. They are taking heavy armor into a city composed of tiny winding streets and alleyways. This means knocking buildings down to clear paths. The only way anybody can plausibly claim there will not be large numbers of civilians killed is to reclassify combatants as anybody remaining within the city limits.
Kevin Drum notes an unsettling result of Tuesday's elections. The races for the House, the body meant to more closely reflect changes in public opinion, didn't really reflect much beyond the make and take it principle. Of the 435 races, six changed parties (4 turned D, 2 turned R). Of the remaining 429 races, a whopping 12 had the challenger finish within ten percentage points of the winner. Only eighteen races nationwide were even remotely in play. Kevin proposes backing a constitutional amendment to ban gerrymandering.
I'm leery of constitutional amendments in general, and especially so in regards to divisive social issues. This one, however, is purely procedural and non-partisan. Defining gerrymandering is pretty darn difficult and I'm not nearly smart enough to propose specifics of a new system, though the commenters on the post linked above toss out and discuss lots of potential schemes. Either way, our system is pretty clearly busted when, in a year with a tightly contested presidential contest, we can't even get 20 competitive House races nationwide.
John Hinckley says he's feeling much better and would like longer unsupervised visits away from the mental hospital.
John, if you're reading this, I know there are some puzzling links between your family and the Bushes, but I have it on good authority that Jodie Foster totally hates Dubya.*
*Secret Service disclaimer: All in jest, fellas, all in jest.
With the election salted away, the assault on Fallujah is underway.
Marine commanders have warned the offensive against Fallujah could bring the heaviest urban fighting since the Vietnam war. Some 10,000 U.S. marines, army soldiers and Iraqi forces are around Fallujah, where commanders estimate around 3,000 insurgents are dug in. More than half the civilian population of some 300,000 people is believed to have fled already.
[...]
During the siege of Fallujah last April, doctors at the hospital were a main source of reports about civilian casualties, which were reported in the hundreds. Those reports generated strong public outage in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world, prompting the Bush administration to call off the offensive. U.S. officials insisted the numbers were overblown. Hospital director Dr. Salih al-Issawi said Monday he asked U.S. officers to allow doctors and ambulances go inside the main part of the city to help the wounded but they refused. There was no confirmation from the Americans.
"More than half the civilian population of some 300,000 people is believed to have fled," but that leaves an awful lot of people there. Of course, Fallujah has long been too unsafe for reporters to venture into, meaning that, frankly, we have no clue what the situation there actually is and whatever news we do receive from that city will be coming directly from the US military, with its long and upstanding tradition of openness and honesty about its operations. What we will not see or hear is the reality of warfare waged on urban populations.
In an age of instant communication, we will have to wait months, if not years, to hear of what happens inside Falluja in the next few days. The media representation of this war will be from a distance: shots of the city skyline illuminated by the flashes of bomb blasts, the dull crump of explosions. What will be left to our imagination is the terror of children crouching behind mud walls; the agony of those crushed under falling masonry; the frantic efforts to save lives in makeshift operating theatres with no electricity and few supplies. We will be the ones left to fill in the blanks, drawing on the reporting of past wars inflicted on cities such as Sarajevo and Grozny. [...] This war against the defenceless will go unreported.
The reality is that a city can never be adequately described as a "militants' stronghold". It's a label designed to stiffen the heart of a soldier, but it is blinding us, the democracies that have inflicted this war, to the consequences of our actions. Falluja is still home to thousands of civilians. The numbers who have fled the prospective assault vary, but there could be 100,000 or more still in their homes. Typically, as in any war, those who don't get out of the way are a mixture of the most vulnerable - the elderly, the poor, the sick; the unlucky, who left it too late to get away; and the insanely brave, such as medical staff.
Nor does it seem possible that reporters still use the terms "softening up" or "precision" bombing. They achieve neither softening nor precision, as Falluja well knew long before George W Bush arrived in the White House. In the first Gulf war, an RAF laser-guided bomb intended for the city's bridge went astray and landed in a crowded market, killing up to 150. Last year, the killing of 15 civilians shortly after the US arrived in the city ensured that Falluja became a case study in how to win a war but lose the occupation. A catalogue of catastrophic blunders has transformed a relatively calm city with a strongly pro-US mayor into a battleground.
One last piece of fantasy is that there is unlikely to be anything "final" about this assault. Already military analysts acknowledge that a US victory in Falluja could have little effect on the spreading incidence of violence across Iraq. [...] Hopes of a peace seem remote; the future looks set for a chronic, intermittent civil war. By the time the bulldozers have ploughed their way through the centre of Falluja, attention could have shifted to another "final assault" on another "militant stronghold", as another city of homes, shops and children's playgrounds morphs into a battleground.
And the most depressing part of all of this? Millions of Americans sitting in their shag-carpeted family rooms will watch the aerial assault in night vision green on their televisions and cheer like they're watching the Super Bowl. I've probably quoted this here previously, but Thomas Jefferson's words ring truer with each passing day of this ill-conceived occupation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
Residents of the Washington area have reported seeing coyotes for months and The Washington Post warned last summer that household pets could fall prey to the omnivorous creatures. But coyotes' presence inside the city limits was confirmed only in September by a naturalist on duty in the woods of Rock Creek Park.
"I suspect we've had coyotes close by for some time. We've just discovered them recently," Michael Bean, chairman of the wildlife program at the Environmental Defense group, said on Friday.
Coyotes originally roamed in what is now the northwestern corner of the United States, but have expanded their range over the last 200 years to include all of North America except the extreme northeast portions of Canada. [...] It is not unusual to find coyotes in a city setting, naturalists say, and they have been spotted in cities in Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin and Illinois, including in Chicago.
I should note that some DC-area residents are thrilled about the new residents.
That's all for today, class. Have a good weekend. Next week, we'll be covering the chapter on getting away with it.
A former congressional candidate and treasurer of the Pennsylvania Libertarian Party has been arrested for evading $87,000 in federal income taxes. Arthur L. Farnsworth, 42, had vowed on his Web site that he would "never file an individual federal income-tax return again."
A federal grand jury alleged that Farnsworth, an electrical engineer, received income totaling more than $221,000 in a three-year period, 1998-2000, but "willfully attempted to evade" his taxes. Farnsworth failed to file any tax returns for the three years, failed to pay his taxes, and tried to conceal his income from the IRS by transferring assets to fraudulent trusts and hiding his cash in overseas bank accounts, the grand jury charged.
Farnsworth was jailed Friday to await a Monday bail hearing. If convicted of tax evasion, he could be jailed for at least a year and ordered to pay all back taxes.
Strategery.
We're all a little frayed at the ends after last Tuesday. Yoyoing between disbelief, despair, and disgust wears on you after a while. So take some time and just zone out. If you've been drinking Robitussin all day, I recommend this one.
Ogged Fontana Labs (d'oh) links to this pair of maps that show the candidates' respective margins by county. The Kerry stacks in the big cities completely dwarf any Bush stacks anywhere. It's really striking. Bush's largest single-county margin is Orange County, California with 155,010 votes; Kerry takes Cook County, Illinois by 805,857 and Los Angeles County by 715,577.
You can even see quite clearly the Durham/Chapel Hill stack there in the middle of North Carolina. So when they blockade us West Berlin style next year, please airlift food and copies of Harper's in to us. We tried...
You'll be seeing lots of the red/blue map broken down by county from the Bush Club, and it does indeed make the election look like a landslide. Of course, we don't vote by land mass, but by population, so that map is less than meaningless. Durham County, my blue home in the middle of North Carolina and just one of 100 NC counties, has 237,000 residents, more than half of the population of the entire state of Wyoming. Los Angeles County has more residents than 41 different states. So you can see the limits of the usefulness of the map. Once you weight the counties by population, the map looks much different; in fact, political implications aside, it's really pretty.
Read here for some interesting analysis of the partisan distribution that may surprise you.
It appears that there are, as the pundits have been telling us, "two Americas," but they are not the ones people usually talk about. They are "divided America," where people split roughly evenly between Republican and Democrat, and "decided America," where everyone is a Democrat. The Democrats of "decided America" number about 5.9 million, or 11% of all Democratic voters. These people are unlikely ever even to encounter a Republican voter in their home town.
If one were to summarize simply, it appears that the election's winner won by a slim majority of people in counties that -- as counties -- were rather ambivalent about their decision. He was opposed by a nearly (but not quite) equal number of people a considerable fraction of whom live in counties that were very certain of their support for his opponent.
(via Crooked Timber)
...if he were running for president in 1848. The winners:
"It is simply not true that we lacked support for the Mexican War. Our coalition was joined by Bohemia, the Papal States, and Lombardy. When listing our supporters, my opponent also forgot Schleswig."
"Our intelligence was clear that Santa Anna had the capabilities to produce ironclad ships. We have not found these ironclad ships yet, but the fact remains that the Rio Grande is safer."
"Today I call upon the Congress to promptly pass, and to send to the states for ratification, an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a white man and white woman as husband and wife."
The voice-activated blender that wants to lay you down by the fire. Be sure to watch the movie.
(via Waxy.org)
A lot of people are pointing out Paul Freedman's article in Slate claiming the morality gap was a non-issue compared to the terrorism gap. He has a point, as far as it goes, but I think he's setting up a dichotomy that probably isn't there. For a good portion of evangelicals, as with any demographic slice of the population, terrorism was their top issue in 2004. It wasn't in 2000 and probably won't be in 2008, but this year is 2004. They watch the news just like everybody else. Deciding terrorism was this year's top issue doesn't make them any less ready to ban abortion and pass hiring bans on homosexuals.
The Religious Right has delivered for the Republican Party for 25 years now and have gotten very little to show for it - some restrictions making abortion more inconvenient, a half-assed toss at Faith Based Initiatives, and Ashcroft as AG are the only tangible ones I can think of off the top of my head. They've pretty much sat on their hands during Bush's first term, looking to this election, and they are sick of waiting. They fully expect to cash in some chips this time. Lots of them.
Now, maybe they will get to and maybe they won't. Shoveldog thinks Bush has pulled a bait and switch on the RR based on his first press conference, and I hope that's true and that the press conference isn't the bait to everybody else, with the switch yet to come. We'll see. The relationship between this administration's words and deeds has always been a tortured one. The more reliable indications will be the new appointments in the obligatory post-election Cabinet shuffle and the first batch of judges that get sent up to the Judicial Committee.
There's a larger strategic issue at question here, though, and it's laid out unsubtlely by Tom Schaller. Progressives should want this election to get credited to the religious right. The Democrats keep losing on the national level because the GOP has been very successful at defining the Dems by its extremes. They don't attack actual policy proposals, they boil them down into hugely oversimplified catchphrases, then demand a defense of a huge oversimplification. We're getting slaughtered at that game and while terrorism may indeed have been the key to the 2004 election, that doesn't change this underlying dynamic next time around.
Make the rest of the GOP defend their extremes. Pull the ugliest faces in the GOP coalition to the front of the crowd. Tom "abortionists should get the death penalty except for the ones I performed" Coburn would be a good place to start. Get cracking on creating a message about keeping the government out of people's private lives. This includes guns. I don't like them and don't own them but really it's none of my business if you do, so long as you don't point them at me. Trying to stem the flow of guns in America is like trying to put toothpaste back into a tube anyhow.
People didn't think they were voting in the neo-conservative foreign policy agenda in 2000; nothing in the exit polling indicated that, but we sure got it all the same. Watch carefully for the signals on domestic policy this time.
Well, I hear I'm harshing people's buzz with all the apocalyptic lamentations and might oughta lighten the air bit. Okay, KTRK has an "exclusive interview with woman accused of severing husband's penis," though that's not so much "ha ha" funny as "you know, this really isn't funny at all" funny. The article is written by a Ms. Jessica Willey, though, so that's something.
But now this, on the other hand, is some insanely funny police blotter action.
As officers watched, the first subject, a 22-year-old man, placed his sparring partner in an "ankle lock," causing the man to scream and "tap out." After the bout ended, the first man, whose friend outweighed him by 60 to 80 pounds, said he could "fuck him up" because of his superior fighting skills. The two quickly resumed fighting, and officers watched the first man continue to employ what they described as several other techniques used by fighters trained in jujitsu, judo and various other martial arts disciplines to get the better of his opponent.
Seeing that the man on the losing end of the fight had already suffered a black eye and was bleeding from the nose and mouth, one of the deputies slid open the unlocked window and instructed the men to stop fighting. The first man asked the officer who he was and if he wanted to fight, to which the deputy replied, "We are deputies with the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Dept."
Unfazed, the man informed the deputy, "I'll fuck you up." He then turned to his battered friend and told him, "You're a better fighter, but I'm going to fuck him up. Just let me pull my pants up." The deputy instructed both of them to settle down and get some sleep, but the man would have none of it.
"Do you want to fight?" he repeated. "Yeah, just let me put my belt on." While the man was attempting to ready his pants for battle, the officer again ordered him to settle down. "No, I'm coming out there to fight. I'm going to fuck you up," he replied. Having observed the man's proficient fighting skills, the officers readied their canisters of Oleoresin Capsicum - better known as pepper spray.
Trousers finally secure around his waist, the would-be street fighter opened the front door, looked at the deputies, assumed a fighting stance with closed fists, and received a two-second blast of pepper spray to the face. Unable to stand up to the spray's superior kung fu, the man staggered back into the house, where he was promptly taken into custody.
Believe it or not, the story doesn't end there. He hasn't even tunnelled into the police station ceiling yet.
Ogged is pissed at some of his liberal friends, and he's right. I left a blog-entry-length comment on that post which I won't repost in full here, because Ogged already did it for me. Please read it.
To all the folks recommending moving right to try to peel off some of the fundamentalist vote: snap out of it. We will never, ever, ever win that game and it is exactly what the Republicans would like for us to do. We moved the party to the right throughout the Clinton years, but we didn't win because of that; we won because the most talented politician in our lifetime was at the head of the ticket. Here's how Democrats did downticket during that span and immediately thereafter:
1992 - 57 senators, 258 representatives
1994 - 52, 204
1996 - 55, 206
1998 - 55, 211
2000 - 50, 212
2002 - 48, 204
2004 - 44, 200 (with 3 House races still undecided)
Moving right isn't the answer, folks. We will never win the fundamentalist vote. However, those guys are going to alienate other parts of the current GOP coalition once they really get rolling - those we can pick up. I can't stress this enough: the question is not left versus right. Those labels barely have meaning any longer. The question is separation of church and state versus theocracy. The Democrats have to be the party of the former because nobody will believe them as the party of the latter. The other message we need to hone is that being in favor of separation of church and state is not being anti-religion. The concept protects both religion and government and even Jesus understood it: "Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, give unto God the things that are God's, and give unto me that which is mine."
If this means we have to spend some time wandering in the political desert, then so be it. Americans may just have to experience first-hand the horror of a fully empowered religious right before they realize just how awful a scenario that is. For now, Democrats need to get together and construct a meaningful, active, coherent philosophy of governance. Triangulation worked okay for Bill Clinton, but not for the rest of the party by a long shot. It's time to be Democrats again.
Following the smashing success of the GOP strategy of maximizing evangelical turnout by putting gaybashing initiatives on the ballot, Random John has an idea for 2008.
So gay marriage works better to get out the GOP vote than MTV does to get out the youth vote. In the midterm, Democrats ought to put a provision on a bunch of key state ballots (i.e. ones with Senate seats currently held by Republicans) to institute a curfew for 18-24 year olds at 8pm.
Hmmm, yes. Or maybe raising the driving and drinking ages to 30. That would be entirely more effective than P. Diddy telling kids to Vote Or Die.
The election is over,
The results are known.
The will of the people
Has been clearly shown.
So let's all get together
And let bitterness pass;
I'll hug your elephant,
And you can kiss my ass.
If you'd like a less gloomy and apocalyptic take on the election, Sean Aday has a good rundown of the silver linings. And John Belisarius sees good news as well.
Associated Press: "Attorney General John Ashcroft is likely to leave his post before the start of President Bush's second term, senior aides said Thursday. Ashcroft, 62, is described as exhausted from leading the Justice Department in fighting the domestic war on terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Stress was a factor in Ashcroft's health problems earlier this year that resulted in removal of his gall bladder. Ashcroft is expected to resign before Bush's Jan. 20 inauguration, said aides who spoke only on condition of anonymity. They said there is a small chance he would stay on, at least for a short time, if Bush asked him."
Of course, an even worse replacement is entirely possible...
I suppose the end is near. What can be said except one down, one to go? When that bastard Sharon kicks it, the two of them can spend eternity chained to one another in Hell. If, you know, any cosmic justice exists in the universe.
Just don't believe that this makes peace in that land any more likely. Markedly less so, in fact.
Healing? We, the people at risk from terrorists, the people who subsidize you, the people who speak in glowing and respectful terms about the heartland of America while that heartland insults and excoriates us... we wanted some healing. We spoke loud and clear. And you refused to give it to us, largely because of your high moral values. You knew better: America doesn't need its allies, doesn't need to share the burden, doesn't need to unite the world, doesn't need to provide for its future. Hell no. Not when it's got a human shield of pointy-headed, atheistic, unconfrontational breadwinners who are willing to pay the bills and play nice in the vain hope of winning a vote that we can never have. Because we're "morally inferior," I suppose, we are supposed to respect your values while you insult ours. And the big joke here is that for 20 years, we've done just that. It's not a "ha-ha" funny joke, I realize, but it's a joke all the same. (via The Poor Man)
The post is funny and worth your time, but there's a serious issue at work here. We are getting endless advice from the right (and some on the left) that we need to show some respect to "Middle American values," whatever those may be. But you know what? We always have, and meanwhile the rhetoric emanating from the red states has consistently been sneering derision toward the "pointy-headed liberal godless elites" (disclaimer: I live in a red state, but in a region of it that broke better than 2-1 for Kerry). John Kerry wasn't called a liberal; he was called a Massachusetts liberal, which somehow was meant to convey an even greater sense of moral turpitude.
What is being called for is not "respect" for neo-GOP values, but capitulation to them. Well, screw you. Your morality is not superior (or, for that matter, inferior), it is merely different. We aren't the ones pressing the culture wars, but we aren't unilaterally disarming either. Don't like gay marriage? Nobody has ever threatened to make you marry within your gender. Don't like abortion? Nobody has ever proposed forcing you to get one. Despite your campaign scare literature to the contrary, nobody over here is proposing banning the Bible. Almost all of us own one, you know. Activist judges? Please. You guys own the judiciary.
Bush didn't take a single west coast state, no northeastern states, and only one Great Lakes state - and that one just barely. He does not have a national mandate with 51% of the vote, a percentage that is likely to drop closer to 50 as the remaining absentee ballots get tabulated. He won, but it was still very close. Let's call it like it is: red America (which is not bound by state borders) doesn't like blue America (similarly unbounded) and vice versa. You guys have controlled all three branches of government and a majority of the governships for years now. You are the elites, despite your cherished, illusory feelings of victimization. For every gram of liberal condescension, there is at least an equal amount of conservative condescension. At least we don't use "conservative" as an epithet.
This is a deeply, angrily divided country and I can't see that division lessening any time soon. I'd love for us all not to sneer and flip the bird at one another, but that reality ain't materializing. Gird yourself for the culture wars. They have begun.
Ken Layne is shrill.
Back in the mid-1980s, I thought I was witnessing the peak of Jesusland and its hold on politics -- the time of Jerry Falwell, the Moral Majority, etc. That version of Jesusland did crumble under the weight of its own sins & scams, but the new Jesusland is even stronger, and totally decentralized -- these people don't even belong to a known religion, like the Catholics or the Methodists; they literally just make the shit up and call it a church. While there is no headquarters for Jesusland, all of its subjects do march at the command of the RNC and Karl Rove.
[...]
I've never had a problem with actual conservatives, because actual conservative thought -- as defined by William F. Buckley, Barry Goldwater, etc. -- is just a way of looking at the role of government. Hell, I've had a lot more trouble with True Believer Liberal Democrats, always telling me what to eat and oh that song is sexist and that's not funny. There just aren't that many actual conservatives. (If there were, Mr. TaxCut-and-Spend wouldn't be reading his Victory Prayer on teevee today.)
But I've got a big problem with Jesusland. If you want to worship the ghost of a jew from the Roman Empire, that's cool. Enjoy it! But when you people and your bizarre mystery cult claim the goddamned president as your prime convert who rules by the voices in his head, I call bullshit. I don't care so much about party politics, but I will fight long and hard to prevent this country from becoming a Complete Theocracy -- if you can call the intellectually vapid mishmash of evangelical Christianity a true Theology. Or, maybe you people just take Jesusland. You won't need the economic power of the coasts, because you don't care if you're employed. Your entire economic output will be shoddy Jesus booklets, Christian rock and bad food. It'll be great.
As for the United States of NonJesusland -- Canada can join if it wants, as long as the Canadians behave -- you people are going to have to learn that not everybody is a leftist. I'm talking to you, San Francisco. New York City is a good model; Berkeley is not. Anytime a do-gooder liberal tries to tell me not to smoke, or not to have guns, or not to laugh at people, I will respond with the well known put-down, "Go back to Jesusland." And that's how the USNJ will remain a confederation of fun.
A more perfect union, indeed.
I'm seeing calls for the Democrats to move rightward in response to losing this election. That would be folly. Such a strategy would only shift the political center even further right than it already is and splinter the progressive coalition that is being built. The consensus is forming that the GOP rode the "we hates faggotses" gameplan to victory, and that probably is the case. I'm sorry, but we just can't compromise on this one. We are right, even if the majority is dead wrong. LBJ knew he was giving up the South by holding firm on civil rights for blacks. We stand at the same crossroads today.
Most of us on this side of the fence expect dire consequences from this election, and I don't think those expectations are mistaken. Now we have to prepare for life as a powerless minority party for two years; constant filibustering isn't really an option. I suspect that by the midterm elections, Iraq will be an even bigger mess than it is today and the deficit will be enormously out of control and damaging the value of the dollar and the stock market. We'll just have to see whether those factors outweigh the bigotry platform that has served the Republican Party so well this cycle. If not, well, better to lose and be right than compromise with hatred. We'll always come up short on that score.
Bush's re-election is a disaster for the country. This will be clear soon enough. Scalia will replace Rehnquist as Chief Justice, three or four SC justices will get replaced by Bush, federal judgeships all over the country will go to Bible-thumping reactionaries, Roe v. Wade will be overturned (you can put that one in the bank), the Patriot Act will remain or get worse. The blowback from Iraq will happen and it will be bloody. Worker protections will disappear, environmental protections will be gutted, our infrastructure will continue its crumbling from neglect. The executive branch will grow ever more powerful and secretive. But we'll have stuck it to them queers, Jim Bob.
Bush's victory came as a shock to so many for the same reason that Howard Dean's defeat did to his backers: mistaking intensity of support for breadth of support. Fighting for what's right is often a lonely and frustrating experience, and nobody knows that better than us southern liberals. However, the groundwork has been laid for a functioning progressive movement and it is more important now than ever before to continue building it. In a sense, Bush's election is probably the best fertilizer that movement could have; we won't be endlessly splitting because a Kerry administration didn't push our individual pet issues against a GOP Congress.
A depressingly large part of America voted on fear and bigotry this time. They will get the government they deserve. For the rest of us, it's time to get to work. For all of you that gave so much of your time, money, and effort this time around: thank you. It might seem all for naught right now, but it wasn't.
The networks haven't called Ohio yet, but CNN just reported that Kerry has called Bush and conceded. I'm not reading the same sorts of reports of actual vote suppression that appeared in 2000, so it appears the GOP simply has the better GOTV operation, and it's based around churches. The popular vote spread is pretty wide this time. I don't agree with the argument here that some sort of coup happened - we were beaten fair and square - but the rest of the post is correct: the theocrats just assumed control of the judicial branch for at least twenty years. The courts are the true disaster of this election. Make no mistake, that is what the American political divide has come to: the secularists versus the theocrats.
The depressingly threadbare silver lining is that now Bush gets to deal with the gigantic messes he created. Iraq is unwinnable and he hasn't any idea how to get out. He inherits his own busted budget. The presidency for the next four years isn't going to be an enjoyable experience.
Bleah. Can't say that I've much cared for the 21st century so far.
Huh. Well, I had predicted a 51-48 Kerry win and ~300 electoral votes, along with minor gains in Congress. Didn't really go down that way, though, did it? I'm available to make stock picks for you as well.
Update (9:52 am): In the end, North Carolina went exactly the same as last time, the same 56-43 margin in the presidential race, Republican Senate win, none of the 13 House seats changed party. In the General Assembly, Democrats went from a 60-60 tie in the State House to an outright majority at 63-57. In the State Senate, Democrats appear to have extended their 28-22 majority to 30-20.
Any of you fine folks who are in the RTP area and know me well enough to contact me personally: there will be folks here late into the night watching the returns come in. There will be much wine being drunk late into the night. Give me a call or drop me an email if you'd like to join us.
By the way, the early exit polling in NC has it 51 Bush, 49 Kerry. I told those guys they should have put some resources into this state...
Warning: Offer may be void outside Japan.
Japanese sociologists and psychiatrists have come up with the best chat-up line in the world. The line "Rainen no kono hi mo issho ni waratteiy-oh" means literally: "This time next year, let's be laughing together." The Japanese team - including Takaaki Ishibashi, host of Japan's equivalent to Blind Date - was asked to find the best conversation ice-breaker.
The panel said that using "this time next year" sent a signal that the bloke on the pull is interested in more than a one-night fling reports The Sun. "Together" gives the impression of freshness in the romance and "laughing" softens the phrase to make it easy to deliver. The winning chat-up line is supposed to work anywhere, but particularly well with an office acquaintance.
Officials hope it will help solve a population crisis in Japan, where birth rates have plunged.
"This time next year, let's be laughing together" in the pursuit of higher birth rates. This time next year, let's be laughing from sleep deprivation while we stuff a Diaper Genie with toxic waste, whaddayasay? Well, it does sport a bit more grace and subtlety than my old standby: "Was your daddy an oscillating fan? 'Cause your phone's ringing."
Works every time.
Anybody know how to write a catchall string that will block URLs containing more than one hyphen?
I stayed at the lovely home of the Afterburner, whom you may recognize from comments sections, last evening. Career military (USAF), Republican by nature (if not by registration anymore), Hawk.
As he headed off to work, he said he had a job to do a little early - fire someone. I respond "Oh, that's never fun." To which he replied: "No. This time it'll be fun. I want George W. Bush to be completely humiliated by tomorrow morning."
Go vote.
While we're all obsessing on the election, the already horrific situation in Sudan is turning ominous:
The Sudanese army and police surrounded camps holding internally displaced people in the south of Sudan's troubled Darfur region Tuesday and refused access to aid agencies, the U.N.'s food agency said. Security forces moved in before dawn and removed some people from camps near Nyala, the World Food Program (WFP) told Reuters.
"Early this morning, police surrounded two camps and later on relocated a number of IDPs (internally displace people)," the WFP's spokeswoman in Nyala, Bettina Leuscher, told Reuters.
More than 1.5 million people have been driven from their homes by violence in Darfur in what the United Nations calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis. [...] According to the U.N., about 70,000 people have died from disease and malnutrition in the last seven months alone.
The search for extraterrestrial life likely won't bear much fruit until we get some actual humans to the locale. Why? Due to the harsh surface environments of the nearby planets, the most likely spot for alien life is in subsurface caves. Astrobiology Magazine has a very interesting article (Part One and Part Two) by one of the leaders of the SLIME team (Subsurface Life in Mineral Environments) that examines the exotic inhabitants of our own caves, often in very extreme environments.
The type of caves that we absolutely know exist elsewhere in the solar system are what are known as lava tubes. These are natural outgrowths of flood-basalt type, quiet, flowing lava eruptions. They are essentially rivulets that freeze on the outside. The rock on the outside freezes and forms a very good insulator that then allows the interior to remain molten and to continue to flow through. Eventually, when the eruption stops, they empty out and you have these very beautiful tubes. That's a very different class of cave from the kinds of dissolution-dominated caves that we often think of.
The gravity on Mars is much lower so lava tubes there scale accordingly. Not only does Mars have enormous examples of volcanism, but it has big whompin' lava tubes. The biggest lava tube on Earth is about 90 kilometers (56 miles) long, in Hawaii. That's the record-holder on Earth, but typically when you look at these features on Mars they're hundreds of kilometers long. And the diameters are equally great. On the average they're 3 to 10 times the size of the average diameter on Earth. They are truly enormous. [...] But these are not only fabulous features, they're also places, at least on the moon and Mars [...] that can actually be exploited as human habitat.
Cave environments are radically different from the surface. Exploration of caves in Saudi Arabia by a very well known caving team, John and Susie Pint, has shown that even in these very hot blasted sand deserts, when you get into these very large bell-shaped caves there are diveable pools. The air in these caves is near saturated humidity. It's a complete change from the overlying environment, even in caves that are not sealed. Just the barrier of above and below provides this radically different environment. This is a big message for astrobiology, that what is dominant on the surface of a planet is not necessarily the key to where you have to go to look for the life. [...]
I would venture to say that the bulk of the organisms that we find are novel; they're not known to science. From one little cave puddle to the next, we have perhaps 80 percent novel organisms. These are truly evolutionarily self-contained environments. Many of them are physically isolated from the surface, little miniature planetary systems within our own crustal environment.
There are a number of different kinds of exotic environments that we work in in caves. We tend to pick them for their specific chemical properties. We're looking for caves that have poisonous atmospheres, that are very hot, that are very cold, that are extreme in some sense, so that we can look at the limits to life on this planet, and learn what adaptive strategies may be used by life on other bodies in the solar system.
Cueva de Villa Luz is one of the most amazing caves that we're studying. It's a sulfuric-acid-saturated cave in Tabasco, Mexico. Gases from the nearby volcano, El Chichonal, come into this cave and make it an extremely poisonous environment within which to work. There are tremendous amounts of hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, even aldehydes and other noxious things in there. It requires complete protection form that environment. But this is the most biologically rich cave of any that we've ever seen. And it's because of these poisonous gases. These poisonous gases are not poisonous to the organisms that are living there. It's home sweet home. We're not looking at extreme environments just to look at extremes where organisms are just barely hanging on. We're looking at them to look for organisms for which that is the most comfortable environment, because those are representatives of what we may find as the average conditions on other bodies.
The SLIME team's website is here, an earlier astrobio article on cave slime research is here, and another interview with the team for the PBS show Nova can be found here.
Never let your kids eat more than one refrigerator magnet at a time.
If the magnets are allowed to pass beyond the stomach, they can attract each other through opposing intestinal walls, which can lead to obstruction, necrosis (cell or tissue death) and perforation of the intestines. [...] While swallowing magnets is not nearly as common as swallowing coins, jewelry or toy parts, there have been a number of reported cases of multiple magnet ingestion over the past five years, including nine incidents in the United Kingdom involving children who swallowed industrial-strength magnets worn to resemble body piercings.
Of course, chances are you won't know that your child has swallowed magnets, so be sure to seek medical attention if he or she keeps turning to face north.
